Friedrich Engels

The Silent Staff-Shouter Moltke and His Latest Leipzig Correspondent

[“Der Volksstaat” No. 35, 25 March 1874]

London, 13 March [1874]

The blood-and-thunder patriotism of some Leipzig fat burgher seems to have been unpleasantly tickled by the fact that the French lost no guns before Metz, but claim, on the contrary, to have taken such from the Germans. In his cannon fever he begs the well-known demigod Moltke for enlightenment, and Moltke favours him, in the *Leipziger Tageblatt*, with one of his droll little oracles, according to which, although certain French generals in Bazaine’s trial disclosed inaccuracies concerning the mutual taking-away of cannon, it must nevertheless be admitted that, whereas the Germans were able to take only one cannon from the French on 16 August, the French on the 18th carted off two German guns. Having said quite enough with this, the silent Moltke must nevertheless deliver a lecture, or else it will not do. So he tells the devout oafs that, according to “present-day tactics”, the artillery must fight in the foremost ranks; hence the Germans lost the two cannons. One can read from his words that, had the French adequately met the requirements of this his “present-day tactics”, they would probably have lost many more cannons and earned his praise, for he says that the Austrians, whose artillery assisted the infantry in the most advanced line of combat, got rid of 160 cannons “in the most honourable manner”. The Austrian artillery, as he himself oracles, manoeuvred in this fashion because the Austrian infantry musket was inferior to the Prussian one. Now, however, since the French chassepot was superior to the Prussian needle-gun, there was certainly a reason for the
German
artillery to make a virtue of necessity, exactly as the Austrian artillery had done at Königgrätz, but for the French artillery it could not

appear advisable to
let itself pointlessly be shot to pieces by the opposing artillery, which was superior in barrel construction and mobility. For Moltke it must indeed be very awkward that on the three days of 14, 16, and 18 August 1870, 40,000 Germans were killed and wounded, despite the fact that the French artillery was handled in a manner so obscure to him that he still says today,

“whether, under these circumstances, the fact of having lost no gun, or only one, is a particular proof of the efficiency of the French artillery or of its endurance in combat, may remain an open question”.

But let no one imagine—as one might be led to by Moltke’s letter of silence—that the French artillery did not do battle properly, and often against the German artillery, on those days. It “does not entirely correspond to the facts”, to put it most politely in Moltke’s own words, if one asserts, as he quite impudently does, that the French artillery “was for the most part a soon-eliminated opponent”. Whoever wishes to know more precisely about this should read “The German Artillery in the Battles before Metz. By Hoffbauer, Captain and Battery Commander in the East Prussian Field Artillery Regiment No. 1. Instructor at the United Artillery and Engineering School”, Berlin 1872, Mittler and Son. An officious book, then! Moltke knows that whoever asks such stupid questions as our Leipzig friend does not read or does not understand such books, and believes that all who read them with understanding “must hold their tongues”.

Moltke’s dictum on the “new” employment of the artillery is not worth the paper on which it is written. The consumption not only of artillerymen and horses, but of munitions as well, is in this process so enormous that in the shortest time neither the men, nor the horses, nor the projectiles can be replaced. Besides, as a result of Moltke’s “new tactics”, the German artillery, out of zeal for science, shoots its own countrymen dead much more often than desirable. This happened on 14, 16, and 18 August 1870. Indeed, the “new tactics” have engendered such a scientifically-knotted artillery shooting frenzy that counter-orders, pleas to cease firing on German troops, were bound to appear as treasonable idiocy. (See Hoffbauer.)

By the way, the procedure of the German artillery on those days was, as even Captain Hoffbauer, Knight of the Iron Cross First Class and unconditional worshipper of his superiors, says, an “improvised” one. Moltke promptly calls it a fulfilment of the

“demands of present-day tactics”, which “require that the artillery must not shrink” (Moltke’s German) “from joining the foremost lines of the fighting troops or, in order to fend off an enemy attack, from holding out until the last moment and protecting the other branches of the service”.

These demands, however, were placed upon the artillery long before Moltke. Nothing is settled concerning “present-day tactics” of the artillery. Before 1815 nothing of importance was written on the subject, and since 1815 the Prussian artillery has idled a good deal and its officers have bickered back and forth among themselves. Since 1866 the Prussians
imagined
they had taken out a patent on cannon wisdom, precisely because they happened to possess a better cannon than several of their neighbours. In the French war they merely groped about with their artillery according to a tactic that, as will be plain to the simplest person, must alter with every appreciable improvement of the gun.

It is nothing but humanity to undertake to make ridiculous and to demolish the oracular pronouncements of Moltke and his satellites, as naive as they are senilely pretentious, whenever they venture into the light in books, newspapers, speeches, and letters.